Corporate Social Responsibility Transparency and its involvement with financial-economic behaviour: Effects on Social Economy companies

Abstract

The peculiarities of the companies which are part of the Social Economy link them to the actions of the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). This paper analyzes the relationship between the publication of data which are linked to CSR of non-financial companies and some financial-economic indicators (economic profitability, financial profitability, liquidity or short-term solvency, financial indebtedness and size). In case of having a significant effect between both aspects (CSR and financial performance), this would give a strong impetus to the Social Economy companies within the business network, given the propensity of these companies towards these kinds of actions and decisions. The companies analysed are those Spanish companies which belong to the Bloomberg database, taking into consideration the relation between their financial-economic situation and the publication of information collected from the Bloomberg database CSR indexes. To be more specific, Bloomberg provides four sustainability indexes: the first one related to environmental aspects, the second one is a social nature index, another one linked to corporate governance and the last one is a global indicator which includes the previous three ones. Data have been obtained from 51 companies in 2018, studying in detail the possible differences between the companies which are included or not on the IBEX35. The results of this research allow us to conclude that size and liquidity are the variables that have a higher significant relationship related to the amount of published information and the fact that transparency does not impact on economic profitability and financial profitability either.